The Power of Showing Up for Your Commitments – June G.

Hi, my name is June and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, thank you Andy for the introduction. It made me feel better than the guy who heard me once in another state who came up and told me he kind of liked my talk but I'm even better on tape. Which I mentioned to my husband when I got home. My husband's here tonight and at first I was thinking I'd be a little bit more nervous he said he would come, but he wouldn't listen, like usually when I talk to him. So I'm not feeling as bad about that. I really want to thank so many of the people that brought me here and invited me here. Deborah and Joe in particular, and my hostess Lisa, who's out there getting me water and cereal and various things. My whole family is here with me this week, and so I've had the privilege of being here for a couple different days. I love this conference, and you know, there's a lot of people that mean a lot to me in Florida that are very, very special, and I've Had the pleasure of spending a little bit of time with them. I got here a few days ago, and we got to have Fourth of July with John and Helen, and I've been friends with them since I was the treasurer for the Southern California Assembly Area, and John kind of taught me at that time how to do that job, because I didn't even know how to balance a checkbook yet when they elected me. And then when I first came to this conference in 1981, I was here with John V., the Mi'kmaq Indian, and we went riding around in Rolls Royce with Shipwreck, which is quite an experience, and And I thought so much, you know, this week of John V. and his talk and how much that meant to me and how special it was to be at this conference. And at that conference, I got to meet a lot of different people. And some of the people that I met were pretty new at the time, like Howie and Patty and a couple of the Starr brothers and stuff. And ones with the red noses back there, all three of them. You're looking for them. And, you know, in 1989 I was invited back to this conference. And at that time, because of the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and the service work that they had done, at that times Howie and Stu were members of the committee. And it was just these new guys who had been here in 1981 and now they were on the committee that invited me back and that you would continue to invite me here again. I'm really very, very honored. I realized, you know, as I listened to each of the speakers that have gone so far and the ones that are coming, I believe that I have the least amount of time. My sobriety date is the 13th of July of 1972, and so I'm the newcomer in the speakers that you've gotten here. And I've had the pleasure and privilege of knowing most of the speaker's that are participating this weekend, and many of them have had a profound impact on my life, And I know that they will on yours. So I'm just delighted to be a part of this special weekend or five days. You know, I want to start out by saying the most important things that I need to say whenever I begin to talk. And they're things that actually that Norm Alpey used to say often or maybe always when he talked, and they meant a lot to me. And so I like to start by saying them. They're the most importante things I'm going to try and say tonight, and that way if you're like me and you can't listen to my entire talk, you'll just know that I already said the most important thing and you can go on and think about yourself but I am I'm not an expert on alcoholism or on Alcoholics Anonymous or on anything else certainly that I'll be sharing about really tonight I'm just a member of AlcoholicsAnonymous I'm going to stand up here for a little while and share as it suggests that we do in the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous and I want you to know because so many of us get here in so many different ways to Alcoholics Anonymous, and because in the years that I've been sober, treatment centers and hospitals have become places where many people find their sobriety and are ultimately led to Alcoholic Anonymous. But just in case the road gets murky in any way along the way to Alcoholice Anonymous I wanted to be very clear that AlcoholicsAnonymous is absolutely free. Had it not been free I never could have come here. Had it nicht remained free I never would have stayed. I was over 10 years sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous before I was ever able to put a dollar in the basket. So this is not about money. And I want you to know that I'm not paid to get up here and tell my story. And once you know that for a couple reasons, because one afterwards when you're having ice cream, you know, I don't want someone saying, you mean we had to pay her for that? You know, but, but mainly because I want you to know the Alcoholics Anonymous is absolutely free. And thank God we have a tradition that says that, you we're self-supporting through our own contributions and that there isn't any membership dues or fees. I'm very, very grateful for that. I am one of those people that believes I was born an alcoholic. I don't want to have any kind of an intellectual discussion with any of you about that after the meeting. It's just something that I believe. I believe it because there was something wrong with me before I started to drink and I don t know why that was. I just know that it was. Alcohol was not my first obsession in life. My first obsession in my life was suicide and I began to try and kill myself on a regular basis from the time that I was five years old. I used to cut my hands and fingers and wrists with razor blades. I usedと beat my face and body with a hammer. I used то burn myself. I did a lot of things to try and hurt myself and to kill myself. I used TO take overdoses of baby aspirin, which were all I knew about at the time. And, you know, that desire to die was one that never left me until after I came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't want to even mislead you into thinking that I simply got sober in that desire to die left. Dying was number one on my list for a long, long time. I wasn't sure this AA thing was going to work. And so I clung to that idea that I wanted out. That's what I really, really wanted. You know, and I have looked back on it in the years that I've been sober in inventory or in checking back. And I can admit that some of my many suicide attempts were to get attention or were to get different things, you know, to go my way. But by and large, as I look back and I stand here tonight, I do not have any doubt at all that I truly, truly wanted to die. Life just hurt way too much for me. It always hurt way Too Much For Me. And there was no benefit, none whatsoever to me that I could see in a future of any kind. There wasn't anything I was looking forward to or anywhere I wanted to go. There wasn' t anyone I wanted to meet. I just wanted out of the pain. And so for someone like me, I'm extremely grateful that I was introduced to drugs when I was seven years old. I began to drink on a regular basis when Iwas eight years old and by the time I was nine I found a combination that I never altered in any way and that was alcohol and barbiturates. And the combination of those got me exactly where I needed to go I was not a party girl I've never had a social drink in my life I never wanted one if you drank the way that I did and you took the kind of pills that I took you don't have a very exciting drunk-a-log either because I just laid there a lot and threw up I grew up in an alcoholic home and I knew a lot about alcoholism first hand and there were a lot of the same things going on in my alcoholic home that go on in alcoholic homes. There was a lot of abuse, there were a lot of broken promises, there were all of those kind of things going on. I did not see alcoholism as a disease. I saw it as a weakness. And in my life, there was nothing that I was less tolerant of in anyone than those things that I had to do and I was to decide were weaknesses. And as I grew up, I'm an only child and I know today that when I was looking around at the people that I Was Looking At, most of them were alcoholic. But before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I do not ever remember seeing a man cry under any circumstances. Now, in my life where I came from, I've seen men shot. I've see them stabbed. I've seem them arrested. I've seentheir children overdosed. I'veseen their wives leave them. I'veseen a lot of different things happen to them. I never saw a man shed a tear under any of those circumstances. I saw the women in my lifego through all of those same experiences. Some of them didn't cry, but most of them seemed to at one experience or another. There seemed to be a breaking point. And I looked at those two different groups of people and I decided immediately which one I wanted to be like and I spent my whole life before coming to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous trying to be what I thought a man was and to me a man with someone who cared about no one who felt absolutely nothing and if they did they never let anyone know it and the only exception the only emotion that I believed that men felt the only thing I ever saw them experiencing was anger and rage and that was perfect for me that's exactly how I wanted to live my life. But I had this very serious problem. It's one that Clancy talks about sometimes, and that was that I seemed to be one of those people that was born without any insulation whatsoever for my emotions. So that from my earliest memories, which were about five years old when I would go out to school, and the kids would tease me just like probably they teased all the kids, you know, but they would teaseme about being tall or being skinny or having curly red hair or what the way my clothes were or whatever it was. It felt like I was being cut up inside with knives. Absolute strangers could look at me funny, and it hurt my feelings and made me want to cry. And so I found out about myself from my earliest memories that I was the thing that I hated the most in the entire world. I was weak. I was not able to control my emotions, something that was so important to me. And then when I found alcohol, I didn't care anymore. You couldn't hurt my feelings. It was, you know, I, I didn't have them. I didn' drink to feel good. And that's what I mean really by I wasn't a party girl. I drank to not feel anything at all, and thank God alcohol worked that way for me. Now when I was a little kid, they'd say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I'd say a boy. But it wasn't as easy to do back then as it is today. And this bothered my family a lot, and my family were very active in the Catholic Church, and they began to take me to priests to counsel me about this wanting to be a boy. And we were on welfare, and so we found out that I was able to see psychiatrists and psychologists. And so I began to see these people, and that's where I got some of my prescriptions. But you know, I felt about psychiatrits and psychologists just like my friend Patty Hicks always did. I thought those people should have to work for their money. Andso I never told them anything. I sat there the required period of time. I never filled out one form. I never answered one question. I said nothing, and when the 50 minutes or whatever it was was over, I got up and I left. I didn't play with one toy. I mean, I was not participating with these people, and you know, I went on from there, and somewhere I had to come up with an acceptance. You know, it was kind of my first lesson that I wasn't going to be able to be a boy, that it just was not going to happen, and in the town that I come from, I grew up in a town called Venice Beach in Los Angeles. It's a beach town. And as I looked at it and making this realization that I wasn't going to be able to be a boy, I saw the only option for someone like me was to be tough broad. And that's what I spent all my time trying to do before I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, was trying to be rough. And if you're going to tough in Venice, I've learned, you know, in the sobriety as I've traveled around in different places that there are different tough broad criteria. But in Venice it's important that you go barefoot. Tough broads have tough feet and it was important that you be in a gang and I was. It was important that you do a lot of fighting and I did. It's important that I remember to let you know tonight I've never won a fight in my life but I've never fought less than five people at a time and my sponsor explained to me the reason I always fought groups of five or more was if you fight one person and you lose people think you're not a very good fighter But if you always fight groups of five or more, no one expects you to win. They think she must be pretty tough or why would that many people have to jump her? And so I walked around with my face beat in a lot in the hopes that I might convince somebody that I was tough. But I never convinced the most important person, myself. I never felt tough. I just wanted to have that buffer. I was brought to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous by my mother. My mother was in and out of the program at that time, had been in and Out of the Program for many, many years with varying lengths of sobriety. She brought me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, not because I asked for help, not because I wanted help, not because I admitted I had a problem, but just because she thought if she left me alone I might get her evicted from another apartment. And I went to the meeting that night and I did not stay sober from that time but the miracle of this program began for me that night and it began because there was a man in that meeting that I admired more than anybody else in the whole world and I admired him for a lot of reasons which you may not identify with but they were the reasons that kept me coming back I admired Paul because he was from my neighborhood in Venice he was actually a drinking friend of my mother's and I had seen him go into bars or parties if he wanted to sit at your table and he'd been drinking, you just gave him the table because it was scary you didn't know what he was going to do he was just kind of crazy and Paul had tattoos He'd been in jails. He rode a motorcycle. He had a knife with him at the meeting. And I looked at him, and I thought, wow. I never thought people this tough came to AA. I thought it was just for weak people like my mom. And I came back to some meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not raise my hand. I did Not believe I was an alcoholic. And even if I was, I was not going to join an organization that was allowing my mother to belong to it. So I went to meetings, and I talked to Paul in between the meetings. And I explained to Paul that I wasn't an alcoholic, that I couldn't possibly be an alcoholic. That I was far too young to be an alcoholic. That I wasn' t anything like my mother who was tremendously alcoholic. That I had places to go, people to see, things to do. I had my whole life ahead of me, and i was clearly non-alcoholic. I later learned that non-alkoholics don't have to spend any time trying to convince other people that they're not alcoholic. it. They already know that, you know? And finally, Paul turned to me and he said, you know, June, he said I'm pretty new in AA. And they've told me I can't diagnose anybody's disease but my own. He said, but in your case, I'm going to make an exception. I've seen the way that you drink and the way you use chemicals. And I happen to believe if you don't come into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and take what these people have to offer you, within a period of six months, you're going to be out on the streets, you'll be shooting stuff, and you're gonna be selling your ass. And he wasn't trying to scare me. He wasn't making up a story like a teacher might do in high school to scare the kids. He was just talking about facts. He was talking about things that had happened and were beginning to happen in my life, and I thought a little bit about what he said, but I did not want to be an alcoholic. And in that two-week period of time, absolutely every option but Alcoholics Anonymous was removed from my life. I was living with my mother at that time. By the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, the only person that I hated more than my mother was myself. And because of the way that I felt about myself, and because of the way I felt my mother, and the kind of person that I was, I used to attack my mother physically. And my mother was sober at that time. She didn't think she had to be subjected to physical attacks in her home, and she asked me to leave, and I did. I had not spoken to and was not invited to call any other members of my family at that point for a couple of years, and didn't bother trying to do that. I'd been in and thrown out of a number of different foster homes. None of them would take me back. I tried to get into some drug and alcohol recovery homes that were in the Los Angeles area. There were not very many, but I tried the ones that I knew about. None of them would take me. Some because of my age, and some just because of my attitude. And then I thought, well, you know what? Who cares? Who cares about these programs and these families and these foster homes? Because none of that really matters if you're a tough broad. There's only one thing that's important. There is only one things that counts. And that's your gang. then one day as I walked down an alley, all five members of my own gang beat me up. And I found myself sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, it was, I mean, I raised my hand. I mean it was very easy. It wasn't like would you like to go to Hawaii or join AA? You know what I mean? There was no other option. When I raised my hand in meetings of Alcoholic, in that meeting of alcoholics anonymous, I know today that there were some people there who were not aware of the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. In particular, the third tradition, the one that says the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. And the reason that I know today that those people did not know about those traditions is because when I raised my hand at that first meeting, some of these people who knew who I was and how old I was because of my mother came up to me and they told me I was too young to be an alcoholic. And they told Me they didn't want a little kid sitting in their meetings while they talked about serious things. And they told me if I came back, they'd get together and throw me out. And I certainly didn't know that Alcoholics Anonymous had a set of traditions that meant that no one who had a desire to stop drinking could be thrown out of a meeting of AlcoholicsAnonymous. I just thought AA didn't want me either. And that was okay with me because I didn't wants me either, and I hadn't for a long, long time. And I fell back on my number-one answer, and went over to a friend of my mother's, and I went into the bathroom at her home, and took enough of the kind of pills to kill myself one more time. And before I passed out, I went to a noon meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And by the time I got to that meeting, I could not stand and I could not sit. I had to lay in the meeting. I don't know about where you guys go to meetings here in Florida, but when I got sober in West Los Angeles in 1972, they almost never called on anyone to share who was laying in the meet-up. And I certainly don't know what I said. I know that they realized I needed to be in a hospital, and that was where I came to. And when I came to in that hospital, the doctor explained to me that the pills I had taken were to slow down my heart. And had I been there five or ten minutes later, I probably would have been in a coma that they could not have brought me out of. And I can't tell you why that overdose was any different than all the others that I'd inflicted upon myself. I just know that it was, because since that time, one day at a time, I haven't taken anything that affects me from the neck up. And that's how I personally define sobriety. And if I continue to do that, the 13th of July this month, I'll celebrate 26 continuous years of sobriety in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, it's very important to me that you know, especially if you're new, that I never planned on staying here for 26 years. You know, when I walked through the doors of Alcoholic Anonymous, if they had asked me whether I wanted to go on living or not for 26 six years, I would have checked the no box. I had absolutely no desire to go on for that long. I mean, it would have been more than I could have stood if they'd even said that was a possibility. I became very active in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. My first home group was the Monday Night Venice Group. Today my home group is the Thursday Night Beginners Workshop in Brentwood. That was also one of my regular meetings when I came of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and has been throughout the Brentwood group, has been since I got sober. But it was not my home group. My first home group was the Monday Night Venice group. And it was a very active group. And I got very active in the program of Alcoholic Synonymous in the service work that my group told me to do. I came to Alcoholics Synonymous, however, with a very bad attitude. I mean, I don't want you to think I got sober and suddenly got a bad attitude. I came here with the only attitude I'd ever had in my life, and it had always been bad. I did not like women. I didn't like my mother. I didn'T like me. I figured I wasn't going to like any of the other women around here. They were alcoholic too. I didn' t like sitting next to women. I did NOT hug women, and I most certainly did not like listening to women's speakers, which is something that always makes me feel better because I know there's never as many people listening to me as it looks like. And the only men I'd ever known in my life were alcoholics. Most of them were extremely violent. The men here scared me, and I didn't like them either. And so I had a problem because when I got sober in July of 1972, all we had were men and women. I didn' t like any of them. But I went to 21 meetings a week anyway the first couple years that I was sober. And I had an commitment at almost every one of those meetings. And most of those meeting I got too early and most of the meetings I stayed out late. And sometimes my day consisted of my walking or hitchhiking to the next meeting. And that was the best that I could do. I wasn't very good at accepting rides. I didn't want anybody around here thinking I needed help. I know how ridiculous that is today, but I wasn'T aware of it at the time. When I came to this program, I had a very limited vocabulary. It consisted almost solely of profanity. There were a few exceptions, the and mother. And I found a number of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who were extremely offended by the type of language that I used, so I tried to use it more when they were near me. I did not wear shoes most of the first two years that I was sober. I mean, I didn't take them off to go to a meeting. I just didn't wear them. I wore motorcycle chains on my wrists and ankles. I had a little jacket that on the back said, Do unto others and then split. It's kind of my own little spiritual slogan. I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and I lit all of them myself. Occasionally someone would hold a match and I let them hold it as long as they liked. But they never lit my cigarette with it. After I'd been sober a short period of time, I took up smoking cigars and then later a pipe. And if you choose to dress that way and to talk the way that I did and to smoke the way that I didn't, you too can sit in a fairly large meeting and have an entire row all to yourself. You know, my commitment at the Tuesday night two plus two meeting was the greeter. And I would stand at the door barefoot, my motorcycle chains and cigar welcoming the new people if they came to AA. you know sometimes you'd hear your their sponsor whispering you see if you keep drinking you'd end up like that when i first came to the program of alcoholics anonymous the people who did not know how old i was were guessing my age at 39 years old and i was 13 at the time and you know it's interesting this year i'm 39 and I feel about 2,000 years younger than I did when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. I never, it wouldn't have been on my list like Bob talked about today but I never thought it was possible that I would not feel old and I just wouldn't put it on my list but it's a great feeling to not feel that way And I don't know exactly how Alcoholics Anonymous made that possible. But I'll share with you some of the things that I believe have made the difference. You know, I got involved with an active group and I've stayed active in the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous and I believe that in so many ways, more than it even makes sense to me, up to and including today, that the reasons for so many of the profound changes within me have had to do with my service commitments in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The very simple ones, whatever they might be, you know, the making the coffee, the setting up the chairs, putting out the literature, showing up when I didn't want to, shaking hands when I did not want to. Whatever those things might be I believe that those foundation ideas that I learned were the things that ultimately were to change my entire life and it does not seem like that could happen and yet it's as if in so many ways inside and out it's like I've had plastic surgery because I don't feel like I used to feel and I don' t look like I use to look you know, I spoke at a meeting a number of years ago back at 26th and Broadway and this guy came up to me afterwards and he thanked me mostly because his sponsor was standing behind him and made him come up there and he said, you know I want to thank you for your talk he said I don''t really believe it was your story but I like the way that you told it And I thought, well, it's only in Alcoholics Anonymous that we would be so paranoid that we'd think, you know, someone hang around for a long time, make up a story and stand up and tell it over and over. But anyway, I've thought about that over and over since then because when I came to the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous, I looked like my story. You know, and I was having lunch with Clancy not that many months ago, and he was talking about the fact that he was telling some other people at the lunch that, uh, that I looked worse after I was two years sober and I was getting even worse. You know, when I was four years sober, I mean in a lot of different ways. And I was thinking about that today, you know, When Bob was sharing, I, um, the foundation that I was learning in Alcoholics Anonymous of showing up for my commitments was the only change that I made in my life really in Alcoholic Synonymous. When I came here, I was an absolute flake in every other area of my life. I had so many jobs, I can't even tell you. I have so many sponsors, I cannot even tell. You know, I would just ask people to be my sponsor. I would never call them. I'd never do anything that they said, you know. I didn't know how to ask someone for their phone number, so I just said, well, you'll be my sponsor, but that doesn't do you any good. I mean, I don't believe, you know. That's not what having a sponsor is and I would get these jobs and sort of like, you again, like some of the things that Bob was sharing about today i would get a job and uh you know they'd want you to be at work at a certain time like say nine o'clock and so i would try these aa things you know that they said they'd say pray so i'd go to bed at night and i'd say okay god they want me to be a work at nine if it's your will that i have this job make sure i'm awake and it didn't seem to be god's will that I worked anywhere, really, you know. And I was sort of just trying out these slogans. I can remember, you now, I got a paycheck. And I think, well, here's a paycheck, maybe I should save some of this toward the rent. But they said it's one day at a time. So I spent it all that day. You know, I mean, it was just these ideas of trying to apply, you kno. And I'm not going to lie to you, and I think it's sort of like what it says in the book. You know we'll pay for our, we'll do some silly things. You know what I mean? I can't remember the exact, I'm never good at quoting the book, obviously. But anyway, while we're trying to put these ideas into practice in our lives. And that was true for me. But I was trying, you know. And I was still doing the AA things and I was staying close to Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you Know, I heard a guy on a tape a number of years ago now and he was talking and he had maybe 30 years. I was listening to him. And he said, You know, if I had to credit the fact that I have 30 years with one thing, if I had to state the one thing that I believe is critical in the fact that I have 30 years if I have to boil it all down to one thing that is responsible for my being sober for 30 continuous years he said I'd have to say it's been not drinking and I mean that is so important here you know John and I were at a meeting this week at the West Broward Club And there was a guy, and he was talking about, you know, he was having a hard time, and He'd just come back from a slip, and He was having A hard time again. And, you Know, He really wanted to start over. And I hope that you know if you're here tonight and you're new or if you'RE not new and you'RE having a Hard time and you've been around, I hope That you know you don't have to drink to start Over here. You know, that's really important, you KNOW, in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've started Over many times. You Know, I've been a failure in a lot of different aspects of my life at various times. And I've been embarrassed, you know, and I should have been sometimes, you Know. But you don't have to drink to do it different and to change here. I came to this program. I have a seventh-grade education. I dropped out of school. I was unable and unwilling to go back to school. You know, I... And instead, what my sponsor, the woman who became my sponsor told me was if I was not willing to go black, to school then i was going to get the kind of jobs that people with seventh grade educations get and that's what i got but those kind of job allowed me a lot of flexibility to get to a lot of meetings to get through those 21 meetings a week i could work a couple hours here and a couple hours there in a graveyard shift here and there and that is what i did and after I had been sober for a while my sponsor heard about this opportunity for me to go to college and learn how to be a secretary and if there is anything in my life I never wanted to be it was a secretary but my sponsor was very excited about this chance and so I went down there and I signed up and I started typing 17 words a minute with 9 errors I typed one day at a time I think for 14 months it was an incredibly long period of time and I finally left the program I was typing 17 word a minute with 9 error and they told me I was never going to make it as a secretary which I had kind of known, you know. But they said I might be able to get a job as a file clerk if I would take an equivalent to a high school diploma. And so I took this test, and I was able to pass. And now it was time for me to go out and look for a job. And I, you Know, for me, looking for a Job was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in sobriety. I was a couple years sober at this time, and I had never known, You know, this is a file-clerk job, so I was going to go work in offices, you Now, in the daytime. And I had Never really known any citizen-y type people. That's what I call those people. And I didn't know how to dress like those people, I didn' t know how to talk to those people I wasn' t really wearing shoes regularly yet. And some women in the program gave me some clothes and they took me to like the Salvation Army and they helped me pick out some stuff and they told me the kind of things that you wear you know, to go look for a job and I started, you know looking for a work and I was looking for a job and it was horrible just awful to go in and meet these people and I didn''t feel as good as these people and I didnt feel as smart as these people and I couldn''t look them in the eye. And I, it was just awful, but I just kept showing up and finally I got a job and I was so excited. I knew my sponsor would love it. It was very square. It wasn't an insurance company. And then I went to work and I worked really hard. And on the seventh day they call me in the office and they said, I'm sorry, we're going to have to let you go. So you don't have enough experience. And she said, and not only that, you don'T seem to have any common sense whatsoever now i didn't know what that was but i knew i was being insulted you know and i went downstairs and i called the los angeles central office i mean i didn'T even have a car yet and i said you know this is june g i'm a sober member i've just been fired and what are you going to do about that and that's what they did they just laughed you know i i had been going to meetings for over two years 21 meetings a week and i hadn't i mean I'm sure it must have happened but I had never heard of a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous being fired. I mean, I didn't think we would let them do that to us. I thought we would picket or something, you know. And I can remember talking to my sponsor that night and I said, you now, I never got fired before I came to AA. And my sponsor reminded me I'd never had a job. And I hadn't even thought of that, you kno. I mean that's why sponsors are so important. and they have all kinds of little insights, you know. I went ahead and I got a job. This woman called me up and she took me down for an interview downtown to a bank. And I hadn't ever been in a bank and she'd heard that they were interviewing and I went down there and I was working on my amends at this time, some of them. One of my biggest amends at that point, financially speaking, was to the library. I was a library book thief and when I first got sober at the Monday Night Venice group they said it's very important that you get the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Very important. We sell it for exactly what we pay for it. We don't make any profit. Now you can get that book and you can take it and you know and you could make payments on it. And they said but if you're too afraid to talk to somebody about it then you can just go ahead and steal it. And I thought, well, I thought if I stole the big book from an AA meeting it might jinx my sobriety. So I went to the library and I stole The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous from the Santa Monica Library and while I was there I stole a copy of The Twelve and Twelve. I heard a lot of people talking about that and I thought it must be an important book. And so after I'd been sober for a while I realized that I needed to make amends for stealing these books along with the other classics that I had. I've been stealing since I was six years old like Misty the Seahorse and things like that. And I took all these library books down to the librarian in Culver City and I explained to her that I needed to return these books but I wanted to know if I could make payments because it cost three to five cents a day and by then I'd had some of the books for 11 years. And she said, that was fine. She said, you know, I used to work in this library in Laguna Beach and this man came in and he'd stolen the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. She said I guess you guys do this all the time. and it was just another one of those you know incidents where I learned I'm not unique you know I haven't done anything unique since I came to Alcoholics Anonymous so I was making these you know trying to make these payments and I filled out this application in the bank and I got to the part in the banking application and it said do the fact that as a bank employee it's necessary that you be bonded and I thought oh no not me I don't want anybody looking into my background I mean first of all they call one library and I've had it you know I, but I, you know, I kept hearing this, do the footwork and leave the results up to God. And so I went ahead and I turned in this application. I got called back on a series of interviews and I got hired to work in a bank. Not only did I get hired to work in the vault. And I didn't even know if AA worked that good, you know. I'd been stealing longer than I'd been drinking, you know. And, and I worked in that bank for about a year and I did not steal anything the entire time that i worked there i was amazed that that was possible i can't tell you i didn't think of stealing anything because that wouldn't be true but i didn't steal while i worked there you know and uh the end of that during that time i had started to take a class at the the city college and uh that i had heard about you know i knew how to read when i came to the program of alcoholics anonymous but i would read the words for example a sentence in the big book and it made no sense. I knew how to say each word properly, but I could not hold the idea of one single sentence in my mind. And I was still a couple years sober and I still couldn't do it. And, um, I heard about this class at the local college and they called it a dummy English class. So I heard some people talking about it and I went over and I signed up for the class. And, uh, I, while I was there, I took another class and, uh—and then I kept doing that at night and I just kept showing up and trying to do the best I could and keeping my commitments in the meetings and working at my job. And I took a couple more classes after that, and then I got offered a job working in the cafeteria and the library at the school, two different part-time jobs that ended up getting me enough money, and I was cleaning houses on the weekends so that I could go to school full-time. And, I started to go to college full- time, and I worked really hard, and just kept showing up, and doing my homework one day at a time like the teacher told me to, and keeping my commitments in my meetings. And at the end of a couple of years they call me in the office at the school and they said you've completed all the requirements for what we call an aa college degree you know i never wanted a college degree but i liked the name they had for that one you know and uh you know I um I graduated third in my class out of 485 students and And both my sponsors were there, and a couple members of my family that were speaking to me at that point came. I was over five years sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous before I got a Christmas card from anyone in my family. It was a really slow journey, you know, the recovery process in my community. family. Anyway, I went ahead and I wanted to go on to a university and I did the footwork which my sponsors told me to do and I sent out my applications and I got accepted and I went on to the university and graduated a couple years later. Somewhere along the line I had come up with this dream and again my sponsors had told me I had to do the foot work for that dream and I went head and filled out the papers and did what I needed to do and I sent off the paperwork and I got a telegram, gosh, I'm trying to think how many years ago now. I think 18 years ago now, telling me that I'd been chosen as one of 300 out of 3,000 applicants to go to law school. Now, I'll tell you, when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always planned on spending a lot of time in court. But never on that side of the table. You know? and I was thinking about that today too when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous one of the people that would speak at my home group was Clint Hodges and he'd become a lawyer in sobriety and there was hope there, there was all kinds of stuff that was happening that I was hearing about in AlcoholicsAnonymous and even as hopeless as I felt about myself not believing that a total change would be possible for someone like me, I still felt a little bit of hope. You know, when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I hated everything about me and my life. And that wasn't something particularly new. I don't ever remember liking anything about me or my life I never wanted to be tall. I never want to be skinny. I never wanted to have curly red hair. I never want to come from the family that I came from. I never wanna be going to school that I was going to. I never won't be wearing the clothes that I'm wearing. I never wan't to be in the family I was in. I never wan't to do what everybody was doing. I never wa'n't any part of it. And most of all, I never for one instant in my entire life wanted to feel the way that I wa'nt feeling. Thank you so much. And when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, Those feelings didn't change just because I became a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I was sober and I was looking back and seeing the things that I had done and the people that I'd hurt and the irreparable harm that I could do and the things I had caused and I hated everything about myself. It hurt to breathe in and out. And I would listen to the people sharing AlcoholicsAnonymous and they would talk about how they'd gotten to a point in their sobriety where they could look themselves in the mirror or they could walk down the sunny side of the street and they could look at God's kids and feel just like one of them, look them in the eye. And I would listen to those things and I would think that could never happen to me. But I did believe that if I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I tried this 100%, that maybe one day when I was walking down the street and I happened to glance in one of those storefront windows where you can't quite help it and you see yourself, maybe I wouldn't feel like throwing up at what I was and where I had come from and what I had done. And that was enough hope to keep me coming back to the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can remember being at the Palm Springs Roundup one night. It was a Saturday night, and it was a banquet. Everybody was really dressed up, and I was sitting there at my table comparing myself to other people in the room, something I still do if I want to be miserable. But anyway, I was looking around the room and I, uh, I wasn't sure what I was doing. I was wearing this brown dress and looking at, you know, the other dresses. And I said, hey, look at that black dress. That is gorgeous. Don't you wish you were wearing that black dress? He thought, no. So what do you mean, no? I talked to myself. What do you means, no, I'm fine in this brown dress. All right, wait a minute. Green is your favorite color, right? Right, okay. Do you see the green dress over there? I mean, is that incredible? It's incredible. Don't You Wish You Were Wearing the Green Dress? I said no, no I'm okay wearing this brown dress. All right, wait a minute. Don't you wish you were blonde or stacked or anything? I thought, no, no. I'm really happy just being tall and skinny and having curly red hair and sitting there in this brown dress. And I just kept asking myself questions. You know, I was about five years sober, I think. Oh, well, don't you want me to sit here? I said, no way. Don't wish you're sitting at that table. That looks like the fun table. it's like no i'm fine sitting at this table well don't you wish you had somebody else's mother like no I'm you know I'm really glad I got my mom and I'm, you know, I came from the family I came and then I'm going to tell you something more incredible than all that and that's really incredible what I just said for where I came right then and there for the first time in my entire life I wanted to feel like I was feeling and I couldn't believe it that never happened to me before i came to alcoholics anonymous while i was drinking i mean even or after i didn't believe that there was enough power anywhere in the world even in alcoholics anonymous that could make a person who hated themselves as much as i did and hated everything about where i came from and what i was come to a point where i was i i didn t want to not feel how i was feeling it still amazes me now i would love to be able to tell you that since that time to this. It's always been like that, but that's not true. You know, there are times when it just is not that way. But more and more of the time, as the years have gone on for me, I wouldn't want to trade places with anyone else, even when I'm having some bad times, you know? And that's just phenomenal to me, that there's a power here that could make that possible. I went ahead and I went to law school, and law school was very hard for me. And it wasn't so much that it was hard intellectually, although it certainly was hard, but it was very hard for because I still felt less than these people. You know now we were not we were outside of the AA world where I was starting to feel kind of comfortable and I was in the other world I felt at that time you know and and I felt like these people were smarter than I was and that they were you know normal and They had these great families, and they knew lots and lots of lawyers. They didn't just know Clint, you know, and I mean, I just thought, you know, God, you Know, I'm not going to make it, you Know, and the fear almost made me to function, but I just kept going to meetings, and my sponsor told Me that Alcoholics Anonymous made it possible for Me to get into law school, and that I had to consider It an AA commitment to do that work and to show Up, and That's what I was able to do. You know, when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I went to these 21 meetings a week, it seemed as though a woman named gail wilson talked at these meetings about 18 times every week and so i thought to myself perhaps if i ask this woman to be my sponsor i can find out ahead of time where she's speaking and then i won't have to hear her all the time and and that was my motivation for getting a sponsor a woman sponsor which still is remarkable to me it talks about in the book that we you know we are people who normally would not mix and i cannot help every time i see that line i think of my sponsor, Gail and I. Gail was almost three times my age. She was from a very loving, close family. I hated people like that. She had been seen on numerous occasions wearing pink in public, something that I did not do until I was over 10 years sober. She not only did not use the language I was using, she didn't know what a lot of the words I was using meant. And I would see Gail at the Brentwood group, which was her home group, and she would say to me, don't sit next to me at the meeting tonight. I can't take the cigar smoke. And I'd say, okay, and then she'd say and please, don't tell anyone that I am your sponsor. And that was fine with me because I didn't want anybody to know I was hanging out with somebody lame, you know, like Gail. and I just you know and here I was she was the one who kept telling me to do this footwork for these dreams and stuff and so I kept doing it and then I was scheduled to graduate from law school in May of 1983 and in April well actually in January of 1983 it became very clear that my sponsor Gail was dying of cancer at 48 years old and she became very sick and I spent a lot of time in those last couple months at the hospital with her. And, you know, when you're sick with cancer in the hospital, there's a lot of different people that come into your room. And, Gail never missed a chance to introduce me to these absolute strangers who had no interest whatsoever in meeting me. Say, Nurse Smith, excuse me, I want you to meet Junie. Junie's like a daughter to me and she's going to be an attorney. You know, and I think about this so much now and Gail and I even talked about it. I mean, this is the same woman who would say, don't sit next to me at the meeting and don't tell anyone that I'm your sponsor. And now she's introducing me to absolute strangers, you know. And we talked about that. I said, you Know, Gail, I said what was, I mean isn't this amazing? And she said, You know, June, when you asked me to be your sponsor, she said I am. I said yes because I had been taught not to say no to an AA request. She said I did not think that you were going to make it. She said, with your attitude and your background and your behavior, she said, I did not believe you were going to stay. And she said... And I can remember you stayed and after a couple of years you said you wanted to go take a class at college and she said I knew you'd never finish. You hadn't finished anything. You were an absolute flake in everything other than your AA commitment. And she says, and I can't remember you hadn't taken all that many classes and you called me up one day And he said, Gail, I think I want to be a lawyer. She said, I had to force myself not to laugh out loud. And we talked about why she didn't tell me that I wasn't going to make it and that it was impossible and that I was going to fail. And she said, you know, June, I never believed in you. But I always believed in the power of Alcoholics Anonymous because I'd been sober long enough to see things happen that shouldn't be able to happen here. And that's why she Didn't Say Anything. about how I couldn't make it or it wasn't possible. Gail died in April of 1983. I graduated in May of 1983, and in order to practice law, it's necessary that you pass what's called a bar examination, and I studied for that examination, and I showed up every day, and I did all of my work, and I kept my AA commitments, and I worked really, really hard, and I took the examination in July, and in November of 1983 I got a letter telling me that I did not pass and was not going to be allowed to practice law in the state of California and I absolutely could not believe it. And I looked at that telegram and I thought this was all a big joke. What are you, crazy? You let these AA people fill your head with all these ideas that you can do something. You know, I mean, this is silly. you can't you know you do it's just wrong and I call my best friend I call my friend Mike and I had to speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that night and I will tell you if there is one place and one thing I never wanted to do more I can't think of it right now then to show up because I felt like the biggest failure in the entire world I was 11 years sober in Alcoholics anonymous. And I didn't, I barely had enough gas to get to the meeting that night in my car. And it was in the city I lived in. I had enough money in my bank account. It was like the end of November. It was almost Thanksgiving weekend. I said, I'm going to pay you $1,000. And he said, I had a lot of money in the bank account to pay my rent in December. And that was it. I could not buy a jar of peanut butter. And i thought, you know, i mean this is just, i I mean, why don't I just do something regular? I was so tired of people leaving packages on my door. AA people, you know, I'd just come home and there'd just be a bag there and there would be bread and there Would be peanut butter and there Would be potatoes. And I think, jeez, I'm 11 years sober. When am I going to get a chance to buy somebody dinner? I never got to buy my sponsor dinner. I mean my whole, you Know, she died before I ever could buy her dinner. I mean it just doesn't seem right. And I would say to Gail, I'd say when do I get to do this for you, Gail? when can I buy you a present? She said, never. You get to pass it on to somebody else. That's not what I wanted to do. I wanted To pay it back and a dollar more to everybody who ever gave me anything. And it doesn't work that way here. And I showed up at that meeting that night and I did the best I could. And after the meeting, I went out to coffee with Mike who I'd known. I met him when I was nine days sober and I took my telegram and we sat at coffee. And I told him, I said, Mike, it is not God's will. This is very clear. Look what this says. And he said, no, I think you should take the test again. I said that's ridiculous. I said you know I have no money. I owe thousands of dollars. All of these debts become, you know they begin I have to start paying them December 1st. I don't even have enough money to buy food let alone pay them back. You know and it's not God It's not a God's will. This is a mess. and he said let me look at that telegram and he looked at it and he says I think this telegram says you're supposed to take it again and it was like one of those conversations you have with your sponsor you know where you say to them what time is it and they say it's a horse you know we're not getting anywhere but finally he convinced me to just borrow more money you know what the hell and so i did and i signed up to take the test again you know right around this time i got a 12-step call from central office i went down to pick up this woman take her to a meeting and uh this is just a week or two later and uh after the meeting i brought her to my house and she was crying and she said i don't have a job and i said well neither do i and she said well i'm not sure i'm going to be able to pay my rent next month i said well neither am i you know she said now how long are you suffering it's like 11 years, it really works though. It's a good program. Really. So I borrowed some more money and I signed up and I took the exam again and I got a telegram a few months later and it told me that I had passed. And I'll tell you, I felt a lot better about the program, the steps, God, everything with that telegram. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm a little bit spiritually shallow. I had a very hard time with that. I got another little paper in that notice and it said that in order to practice, you still have to be sworn in. And that's just another ceremony where they get some more money from you. But they said that the swearing-in ceremony would actually take place on June the 13th. And That was my sponsor, Gail Wilson's AA sobriety date anniversary. And so sometimes I think maybe that's why, for me. It happened on a very special day that I was allowed to begin this job. And I began to practice law after that, and I was given a job that I love very, very much and where I believe I was able to be of service, and I'm very, sehr dank. I just can't believe that Alcoholics Anonymous could make that possible. You know, if you're sitting out here and you're single, I have some very bad news for you at least it was bad news for me and that is that you're probably going to have to date and I hate dating I have always hated dating I would much rather fall in love now I don't know about here in Florida but in West Los Angeles we have a lot of AA dates that's where a guy asks you out and then he takes you to a meeting and after the meeting you go to coffee and you talk about the meeting and by the time he takes me home you don't even know whether to kiss him goodnight or say the Lord's Prayer and uh i guess you do have those here so i had a number of uh of these aa dates in my life and when i was in law school this guy asked me out and uh i i wasn't really sure i should go out with him because he didn't have any tattoos and i i just didn't know how something like this could work you know and uh and we began to go out and uh we um we continued to date for a number of years and uh in 1988 we decided to get married and in november of 1988 i was 16 years sober and we had a huge wedding and every member of my family came. Two of my ancestors, well, I don't know how you call them, two people from my grandparents on each side came from Canada that I had never met. They had never been to the United States before. They came to represent each of my grandparents who had passed away. And every member OF my family, all but three I guess lived out of state so they all had to pay some kind of money you know to get there at this wedding and you know I think about that um the date and the time you know along the lines of some of the things that Clancy talks about when he talks about the reparations that can happen here uh with his father that he talks about and the slowness of the journey of the healing the relationship in my family and I'm so grateful by the time that I um because of the time that i got sober um i mean because of the time that i got married i was able to have my uncle uh give me away and uh that could not have happened for me you know if i had gotten married earlier in my sobriety i just had too much anger and there was too much damage in my family and um my uncle was very very special and very very important and as was my aunt and uh my uncle gave me away at that wedding and john and ellen were there and uh you know there I didn't want to be anybody else. I didn' t wish I was marrying anybody else and I wish I wasn' t wearing anybody else's dress. You know, I liked the shoes that I had. I had shoes, so you know. And when I came to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in the first couple of years I began to have a lot of relatively serious medical problems. I saw a number of specialists, probably over 20. And by the time I was 15, a numberof these specialists had told me that I needed to have a hysterectomy, but it was a question of waiting until I was 18 years old before I could have one because of the problems, the medical problems that I was having. And so when Ira and I got married, I really didn't believe that we would ever be able to have children, and we talked about it before, that we Would probably adopt if that was what we chose. And we began to try, and I saw a doctor, and we figured go ahead and try. And after a couple of years, about three years, and a miscarriage, I became pregnant. And in 1991, I had our daughter Samantha. and um you know we'd had some um some medical help and uh and about six months later i was feeling very sick with the flu that was going around and so i went to the doctor finally because the flu everybody else was getting over the flu and the doctor said i didn't have the flu i was having another baby which we couldn't believe because i hadn't had any you know medical help for it. We hadn't talked to anybody. I mean, it was just, you know, we couldn't believe it. And they called them Irish twins. And we had our daughter Jessica. And about a year and a half ago, we had her daughter Cassandra, Casey. And all three of our little girls are here with us this weekend. And so is my husband Ira. And he agreed to have our family vacation here, and I'm very grateful for that. And I'm very grateful to them. You know, I never wanted to be a mom. I never wanted to have kids. I think there were a lot of different reasons. I think a lot of it had to do with how much I hated myself, and I was so afraid that someone might end up being like me. And you know, today, once in a while, people come up to me and they tell me my oldest daughter Samantha looks like me and you know in the early years of my sobriety I might have hurt somebody who said that and today I can just smile and say no she's really cute you know she doesn't have curly hair but we can't all have everything you know I um I don't think a day goes by where I don't look at these kids and think about Norm Alpe. When I got sober in Los Angeles, there was a man there named Norm Alope who spoke a lot, lots and lots of meetings. And every time I ever heard Norm AlPE speak, he had the most energy and enthusiasm and excitement of anybody I can imagine. He would stand up there and he would talk about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the things that it allowed to happen in his life. And every day, every time right after he finished his talk, I'd think, I want to join AA! And then I'd remember I already was a member. I wouldn't have been there to hear him, you know. But he was just incredible. And one of the things that Norm would say in every one of his talks was that, you Know, but for the grace of God and people like you in rooms like this, I could have missed it all. And, You know, I look at these kids and I just think I just can't believe that this is possible. I want to tell you about a couple more things real quick and then I'm going to sit down. I, we moved a couple of years ago and we bought a house and we were leaving our other house. And at our other home, we had a tree. And I had never had a house in my life. I'd never had tree. But I was actually more attached to my tree than my house. It was a big 45-year-old tree. It covered the whole yard. It's a very special tree. And I was in the backyard and I was kind of crying. I know it's hard for you to imagine that I could do that, but I was. And I was sitting out there and my daughter came out and she said, well, why are you crying? And I said, Well, I'm kind of sad because I'm leaving my tree. And she said Well, maybe it's time for another family to have this tree. You know, and I mean, it's one of those things like, you know, Cindy jokes about where you feel like you ought to ask them to be your sponsor, you know at that point. You know, my mother is sober. Well, I don't know if I should say sober really. She's not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, but she's not out there drinking on the streets. And it's been very, very difficult. You know I believe, I certainly don't for a fact, but I believe that my mother is one of those people who suffers from grave emotional and mental disorders. And my mom has a really, really hard time and she takes a lot of different medication and I don't even fully understand the things that she takes. I know that there's no joy in her life. I know that I've been taught in Alcoholics Anonymous to show up and to do the best that I can and that's what I and my husband Ira helps me be able to do and we try and share our kids with her to try and add something to her life but I know that my mother is an alcoholic and I'm telling you You know, the alternative for an alcoholic without Alcoholics Anonymous and not drinking, it's not something that any of you would want to experience. I was at a class for my daughter a couple of years ago. She was graduating and going on the way to kindergarten. And they filled out this little paper in the beginning and it said, you know, what's your favorite color and what's the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life? She said, Disneyland. And then it said what's the worst thing that ever happened to you in your life? And she said I fell down and I got a boo-boo. And I want to thank all of you and everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous for allowing that to be the worst thing that has ever happened in my daughter's life. Because that's not where children who live in alcoholic homes need to write down on that paper. It doesn't happen quite like that, and I know. And I know that most of you do too. I want to read something with you. It actually involves the theme of this conference. It's one of my favorite parts in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then I'm going to sit down. We have shown how we got out from under. You say, yes, I'm willing. But am I supposed to be resigned to a life where I shall be stupid, boring and glum like some righteous people? I see. I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I have you a sufficient substitute? Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous where you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. Thus we find the fellowship, and so will you. Please, if you're out there and you're new or you've been around a while, if you're in one of those long dark hallways, please don't give up before your miracle happens. I have no idea what it's going to be. I've had no idea any of the ones that have happened to me, nor do I know the future ones, but please don't give up before your miracle happens. Thanks for having me. Thank you.